Boris Johnson’s India connection goes beyond love of curry

LONDON

: If larger-than-life Boris Johnson becomes the Tory leader, he will be the first British prime minister with a strong Indian connection.

His estranged barrister wife Marina Wheeler QC, 54, is half Indian. Before they announced their separation last September, Johnson travelled innumerable times to India with Marina throughout their 25-year marriage and stayed with her cousins in Delhi and Mumbai.

"I can't think of any other British prime minister who has had such a strong Indian connection," said journalist Rahul Singh, the late Khushwant Singh’s son.

Johnson, who once inappropriately recited a pro-colonial Rudyard Kipling poem in a

Myanmar

pagoda and who "makes model buses out of wooden wine crates to relax", is the clear favourite in the Tory leadership race to be the next prime minister.

Either he or foreign secretary

Jeremy Hunt

will be announced leader of the Conservative Party on July 23, after being selected by 1.6 lakh Tory members.

Polls indicate the 55-year-old Johnson is on course for a crushing victory despite the audio of his fiery bust-up with his 31-year-old girlfriend Carrie Symonds last month being leaked to the press.

Ex-wife Marina’s Sikh mother Dip Wheeler (nee Kaur), who lives in West Sussex, married Daljit Singh, son of the builder Sir Sobha Singh, whom she met in Delhi. Her second husband was the late journalist Charles Wheeler.

Dip’s sister Amarjit married Daljit’s elder brother Bhagwant Singh, whose niece is actor Amrita Singh, also Saif Ali Khan’s first wife.

"Marina stays in touch with Daljit’s family because of that," Rahul Singh, who is Dip’s nephew by her first marriage, said. "If Boris becomes PM, it will be good for UK-India relations. I think he will bring out policies favourable to India. Behind his jolly, outrageous manner is a very sharp mind at work. I think he has the right sensibilities to get on with the Indian government. He loves India, and knows India pretty well through his marriage. The children seem to be very comfortable with their Indian cousins, whom they meet often. Marina must have been a great asset to Boris in his political ascent to foreign secretary and, perhaps, now as prime minister."

Daljit was born and brought up in Hadali, formerly part of British-ruled India and now in Khushab district of Pakistan's Punjab province. The family moved to India during Partition.

"Boris has visited India often for weddings in Marina’s family. I met him, Marina and three of their children in Delhi last when they went to the Rathambore Tiger Reserve. There was a family gathering in Delhi. He knew all of Marina’s relatives’ first names, of which there were about 15. He ate Indian food, which he loves, was drinking beer and fits into Indian culture. He is totally at home in India, and Indian business people like him. He said to me that because he was married to someone half Sikh, all the Sikhs in Britain would vote for him," Rahul Singh said.

According to him, most Indians would have became familiar with Johnson, and his quirkiness, during his stint as London mayor.

The prime ministerial aspirant, who once compared women in burqas to letterboxes, has Turkish roots. His great grandfather Ali Kemal was a Turkish man with an Anglo-Swiss wife.

The Etonian and Oxonian, who has had at least one love child from a string of extramarital affairs, has promised to deliver Brexit by October 31 "do-or-die".